


Eight

by kyrilu



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, M/M, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 09:29:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theta traces a sideways figure on Koschei's back as they dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eight

**Author's Note:**

> In my headcanon, the Doctor and the Master traveled together when they were young - they decided to grab a TARDIS and leave Pyrodonian Academy to have some ridiculous adventures...and during all this, Theta realises how much he wants to just wander and be free and sometimes interfere, and Koschei realises how much he wants to rule it all...:( And, of course, this leads to them separating and fighting and being genuinely effed up.
> 
> Yeah. I realise how much this one-shot suffers a case of tell, don't show. It's very angst-y, too.
> 
> Also: cookies to whoever spots the mini-crossover!

Theta traces a sideways figure on Koschei's back as they dance.

"Eight...why eight?" Koschei asks, tilting his head upwards to level with Theta's. His green eyes flicker with each thought and word, cool and clear like ice. (But sometimes blazing like fire.)

"It's a sandglass," Theta lies, and lets a strange smile creep up his face.

Koschei shakes his head, baffled and slightly scornful. "And?"

"And nothing," says Theta, and the conversation lapses into a simple silence.

In the background, light orchestral music plays softly through the room, while dark-coloured lights beam in dizzying arrays across the wall. Theta thinks: _Chiaroscuro_ , before the word fades from his mind, half-formed, quarter-formed, and gone.

But then the word - the idea - solidifies, and he says out loud, hesitant, "Chiaroscuro."

Koschei doesn't hear him, but Theta almost wishes that he had. He closes his eyes and tries to forget, blocking everything from view.

The sounds around him intensifies: Koschei's breathing and the murmur of conversation in the restaurant; the clinking of glasses and tableware; the soft rolling laughter which rumble over the customers in waves, leaving their corner of the room transparently untouched.

A hand grips Theta tighter, and a panicked feeling whispers to him: _The silence, the quiet - I don't want it, make it go away-_

He doesn't speak, yet he reaches a soothing hand out to cup Koschei's face, moving a thumb gently across a cheek.

Softness. The feeling reminds Theta that he and Koschei are still young. (But that isn't true, is it?)

Theta breathes in Koschei's smell, and it is the scent of gentle wind and crimson grass and vast open sky. _I want to remember this_ , he thinks, _I want to remember Koschei and Gallifrey and the sprawling red meadows._ He doesn't think he'll remember it all properly.

In the distance, a comedian entertains the guest. Loud, rowdy laughter rolls around and around and around. Theta laughs, too, even though he doesn't understand this galaxy's humour.

"Where are we again?" wonders Koschei, and their dance slows to a standstill.

Something in the sky is changing. Through the glass dome on the ceiling, Theta sees stars and planets bleeding into each other in a blur of ultraviolet light.

"What's going on?" Koschei says more urgently this time, his gaze transfixed on the world above him.

Theta smiles. Laughs. "The End of the Universe, Kosch. We're in Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."

And then he pulls Koschei out the door and outside, where what seems to be a car, but is in fact, a spaceship, awaits them. He can feel the universe compressing, time closing and ending even though time has no end.

He shuts his eyes to feel it all, a hand reaching to touch Koschei's desperate to quell the sparks of loathing and ambition and rage and fire bundled up within his friend (lover).

 _I am the wind_ , he thinks, _that will swallow up the fire_. And then he kisses Koschei under the breaking stars.

 _I am the oncoming storm_ , he thinks again, _that will rage and destroy and heal again and again in a single burst._

He makes a wish to the last remaining stars, as if the end of their lifetimes began with Koschei's transition to something...different.

And so the universe ends.

And then he snatches Koschei's hand and runs into the TARDIS and into the universe, bringing back the stars once again.

~

There is a man watching the story unravel like an embroidery's threads being undone.  
He brushes a careless hand through messy brown hair thoughtfully, his mind lost in what he calls the past and what the two boys call the future.

The man thinks of two broken men in a junkyard of broken things; he suddenly finds that is unable to differentiate one man from the other.

"Chiaroscuro," he says with a small laugh. "Look at us then, Master," he whispers. "Look at us then."

The sensation of regeneration tingles through his body; golden dust flickers, winks.

The Doctor retreats back to a blue box and traces a sideways eight on its side, and below it, mimes the Gallifreyan character for infinity.

**Author's Note:**

> _The stars shall fade away, the sun himself_
> 
> _Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years,_
> 
> _But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,_
> 
> _Unhurt amidst the war of elements,_
> 
> _The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds._
> 
> Joseph Addison, 'Cato: A Tragedy'


End file.
